President Trump Brought ‘Apocalypse Now’ Up in a Meeting With Veterans, Then Was Totally Confused About What Happens In it

We don’t share every tidbit of news involving President Donald Trump, even some of things connected to the world of movies and television, but this story is too bizarre not to at least acknowledge. It comes from the Daily Beast, in a report about a “weird” meeting the President and his former aide (and current thorn in his side) Omarosa Manigault Newman had with veterans.

The meeting was designed to allow veterans to directly share concerns and ideas with the administration. Trump went around the room asking each of the guests about “what they were working on and how his administration could help.” One attendee brought up Agent Orange, a toxic chemical used by the United States military during the Vietnam War. Somehow, this sent the President off on a tangent about Apocalypse Now, the 1979 Vietnam War film by Francis Ford Coppola which definitively does not involve Agent Orange.

For whatever reason, Trump thought it did. First he called it “that stuff from that movie.” Then he specifically mentioned the famous “Ride of the Valkyries” scene from the film, where American helicopters decimate an area of the forest with a payload of napalm. But Trump refused to believe they were using napalm; he insisted it was Agent Orange:

[Trump] then went around the room polling attendees about if it was, in fact, napalm or Agent Orange in the famous scene from ‘that movie,’ as the gathering—organized to focus on important, sometimes life-or-death issues for veterans—descended into a pointless debate over Apocalypse Now that the president simply would not concede, despite all the available evidence.

If you know the scene, you know there’s not a lot of ambiguity here. Robert Duvall’s line — one of the most famous in movie history — ain’t “I love the smell of Agent Orange in the morning.”

Anyone know if Trump has watched Starship Troopers lately? That would explain a lot about his sudden push to create a Space Force.